Thursday, December 06, 2007

Autonomous pelican plane

Pictured is a new seaplane UAV made at the University of Michigan. They've called it the 'flying fish' - not entirely accurate since it can only land on, not swim in, water. It has a seven foot wingspan - making it "about the size of a large pelican" according to one of its builders.

During recent sea trials in California it successfully showed off in front of DARPA officials, taking off from and landing on the water 22 times. It was programmed to use GPS to take off after drifting a certain distance, and to land at another GPS location.

For now though, it is flying blind. It has no awareness of its surroundings and simply uses the GPS cues to trigger recordings of the remote pilot's flying. That means it can only go out on fine days - waves cannot be accounted for. That will have to be worked on if it is to be of much use - but apparently no one has built a seaplane UAV before.

Seaplanes may not be as fashionable as they were in the 1930s, but the approach makes good sense for AUVs. If they are to perform long-term missions, it could be useful to land and wait for a while before taking off again - perhaps when something worth following passes by, or when new instructions arrive.

To Steve: I think the point was that the plane can take off and land on water, a non-trivial task that has apparently never been performed autonomously before.

And to the original blogger: I think you misunderstood the Michigan press release. It's not that the plane can't operate in waves -- it's just that the oscillation of waves is why the takeoff and landing have to be blind. If it tried to monitor its position and take off, it would be confused by the waves -- so it just ignores the waves and takes off using a pre-set routine.